Hollywood is notorious for embellishing the content of their big screen projects to create an R or PG-13 rating thus assuring a more bankable product. While the morality of such practices is questionable, twisting the truth to paint a person black (as the Rolling Stones put it), and turn a better profit in biographical projects is as ethically dubious as it gets.

A case in point is the 1994 small screen adaptation of Laurie Kellogg’s life, Lies of the Heart: The Story of Laurie Kellogg. What begins with a loosely constructed tale revolving around the horrific May 1992 murder of her husband, Bruce, bends reality to create a more dramatic and thus marketable the made-for-TV movie.

Laurie was cornered with mounting legal fees and fighting for her freedom with a naïve faith in the same system that put her in a cage and so she signed away her rights for $10,000.00 which went right into her lawyer’s pocket. She has said that it is hard to put a percentage to it, but the movie is somewhere between 50 and 75 percent Hollywood and 50 to 25 percent truth. Not a pretty picture.

Laurie is slowly, courageously, and painfully facing the past and working on an autobiography to get the truth out there, but it is a difficult endeavor. Still she is going forward grappling with all the hurt, exploitation, corruption, and missteps that brought her to prison. There is much to tell, and according to her, much the movie misrepresented and twisted. People forget that this is a person, a person with a life, with children, with feelings, and dreams. A person unjustly imprisoned in a wasteland where hope is as rare as rain in a desert.

Yet Laurie has an indomitable spirit and continues to look up and reach for rain, as it were. She remains bowed but not broken and is nourished by your letters and goodwill. The encouragement she receives through them helps her keep going for she strives not only for herself, but for all victims of domestic violence and wrongful conviction everywhere.

Hollywood may twist the truth to feed its money machine, but they cannot keep it down forever. Laurie treasure’s your support and friendship as she continues to do all she can to get the truth out there, you are her rain in a barren and thirsty land. On her behalf we at Help Free Laurie thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

We will keep you updated on the progress of her book, it will be some time before it is completed. But until it is done, we would only ask you join in the cry of our hearts: “Let It Rain!”